I have been at a Tree of Life meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia this week.  It is funded (indeed, my travel and accomodation and food is funded by The Leverhulme Trust). Larry Moran is blogging about the meeting on the SandWalk blog.

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I have been thinking about the Irish educational system and in particular the leaving certificate.  The figures came out last week and it seems that 70% of our students are getting private education as well as public education.  This means that in the evenings and weekends, 70% of the students are going to private tutors […]

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According to the Irish Independent, Liam Carroll the property developer has sold his shares in Aer Lingus - that’s more than 30 Million of them.
He is probably not short of a few quid, but nobody knows whether or not he is.
This is a small  example of what could be happening right now to builders and […]

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So, nobody goes to the pub any more. Publicans cannot make a living and pubs are closing and instead they are opening off-licences. People are dinrking at home and are now unsupervised by the publicans and as a consequence they are killing themselves with the drugs, injecting cannabis into their arms and all […]

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Today fatmammycat (whose blog is excellent, BTW) posted about channel 4 showing the last part of the life of a dying woman who was morbidly obese. You should read FMC’s post on this.
I was in the states recently, which, as you know is home to some of the most obese people on the planet. […]

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Today, Fine Gael released a press release that simply beggars belief. This was brought to my attention by Simon of the DossingTimes.
Here’s the teaser, the headline:
Fishermen alienated by Govt could help in fight against drugs - Creed
However, the meat of the press release is in the second paragraph:
Speaking after a meeting with the Irish […]

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I have a facebook account. Nothing too unusual there, there are more people on Facebook than live in France.
However, last week, I received a post from somebody and I replied to it. The funny thing was that every single person on my list of Friends received the message, resulting in a lot of […]

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Today the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, the leader of the opposition Enda Kenny and the Sinn Fein leader in Leinster House, Caoimhghin O’Caolain all said they supported the idea of introducing a National Honours System, while Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said he opposed the idea.
Interesting notion, the idea of an honours system. It is a […]

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There is a new study that publishes a model for women to leave abusive relationships.
For many women, leaving an abusive relationship is very difficult and may take them years and might involve many attempts to leave before finally doing it for good. It is also frustrating for the women’s support group who may not […]

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I sometimes feel that on the blogosphere there is nothing but doom and gloom and rarely do I see a good story, unless it is about sport. I find that whinging gets me down and on balance I don’t think Ireland is a bad place. I like the people and the fact that […]

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